Ethics from the Barrel of a Gun: What Bearing Weapons Teaches About the Good Life

[cobben]

This is by Eric Raymond, the open source guru.
I've posted this because of the recurring discussion is various threads of whether it is necessary to own guns or not.

This is a not really a rant, it is a well though out piece and well worth reading. He has a lot of other interesting essays also, aside from the open source stuff which of course dominates his site.

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Ethics from the Barrel of a Gun:
What Bearing Weapons Teaches About the Good Life

http://www.catb.org/~esr/guns/gun-ethics.html

"

The bearing of arms is the essential medium through which the individual asserts both his social power and his participation in politics as a responsible moral being... (Historian J.G.A. Pocock, describing the beliefs of the founders of the U.S.)

. . .
It is more important than ever, today after a century of blood, that we retain the power both to protect ourselves and to discern the cause of such oppressions. That cause has never been in civilian arms borne by free people, but in their opposite and enemy — the organized and conscienceless brutality of cancerous states.

It is time to recognize that we, as individuals and as citizens of our neighborhoods and our nations and our planet, have gone too far down a road that leads only to disintegration of both society and self — a future of atomized and alienated sheep, terrified by the reflection in each others' eyes of the phantoms in their own souls, easy prey for demagogues and dictators.

It is time for each of us to rediscover the dignity of free men (and women) in the only way possible; by proving it in the crucible of daily decision, even on ultimate matters of life and death. It is time for us to embrace bearing arms again — not merely as a deterrent against criminals and tyrants, but as a gift and sacrament and affirmation to ourselves."

[Guest]

Re: Ethics from the Barrel of a Gun: What Bearing Weapons Teaches About the Good Life

Here's another point (or counterpoint rather) to the above "ringing clarion call" for the inalienable rights of the individual:

A gun can still shoot, and remains lethal, whether it is in the hands of a 3 year old infant, or in the hands of an experienced and responsible adult. The article above posits the propriety of guns in the hands of responsible adults. But it goes on to contradict itself somewhat, because it points out that we've now become a group of nations where people are more like spineless sheep, accustomed to the state taking those rights and administrations over from us. Well that clearly notes, that the former "adults" have regressed to a less responsible condition. Yet they still have the guns. Therefore what this author has unwittingly acknowledged, is that it's OK for guns to remain in the hands of infants as well as responsible adults. It's not a black and white case, of course. But this point is skated over entirely.

The gun is a constant, in terms of it's lethality. The hand that holds the gun can vary - from being that of a responsible adult (both in the literal and societal sense) or thehand of an infant. How many of the sheep this article cites, have regressed in their sense of responsibility to society, to effectively now being societal "infants"? Whoever reflexively punched the "five stars" button for this thread is not doing the most diligent and agnostic thinking on this topic.

[mfyahya]

Re: Ethics from the Barrel of a Gun: What Bearing Weapons Teaches About the Good Life

This is by Eric Raymond, the self-styled open source guru.

There, corrected that for you.

ESR may write well, but he doesn't have much credibility in the free software developer community.

[cobben]

Re: Ethics from the Barrel of a Gun: What Bearing Weapons Teaches About the Good Life

mfyahya,

I didn't intend to imply that he was "the one & only", just to make him easily identifiable. Though he did play a major role in the open source debate with his "Magic Cauldron" & other pieces. Perhaps there is some envy out there?

[Guest]

Re: Ethics from the Barrel of a Gun: What Bearing Weapons Teaches About the Good Life

"The bearing of arms is the essential medium through which the individual asserts both his social power and his participation in politics as a responsible moral being... (Historian J.G.A. Pocock, describing the beliefs of the founders of the U.S.)"

As true today as it was in the earliest days of the Republic. Uh Huh.

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Violence between repo men, car owners on the rise

By JAY REEVES – 17 hours ago

HALSELL, Ala. (AP) — Alone in his mobile home off a winding dirt road, Jimmy Tanks heard a commotion at 2:30 a.m. just outside his bedroom window: Somebody was messing with his car.

The 67-year-old railroad retiree grabbed a gun, walked out the back door and confronted not a thief but a repo man and two helpers trying to tow off the Chrysler Sebring. Shots were fired, and Tanks wound up dead, a bullet in his chest.

The man who came to repossess the car, Kenneth Alvin Smith, is awaiting trial on a murder charge in a state considered a Wild West territory even by the standards of an industry that's largely unregulated nationally. Since Tanks' death last June, two other repo men from the same company Smith worked for were shot, one fatally.

"It's gotten to where it's a crazy world out there," said Smith, 50, an ex-Marine who preaches part-time and sings gospel music. Smith said Thursday that he fired in self-defense after Tanks fired a shot.

With the U.S. dealing with an economic slide that has cost millions of jobs, the number of vehicle repossessions is expected to rise 5 percent this year. That's after it jumped 12 percent to 1.67 million nationally in 2008, said Tom Webb, chief economist with Manheim Consulting, an automotive marketing firm.

That followed a 9 percent increase in 2007, creating more opportunities for bad outcomes in an industry where armed confrontations and threats happen every day.

Joe Taylor, whose Florida-based company insures repossession companies, said licensing and training is the answer to avoiding such violence.

"If a guy is just put right on the street without training, the potential for violence is very, very high," said Taylor, who runs Insurance Services USA.

Federal law says workers can't "breach the peace" while repossessing items, but it doesn't go further to state just what that means, leaving definitions up to courts.

All three Alabama shootings were in the middle of the night, which an industry leader said was a sign of a problem.

"The smart operators aren't out there at 2 or 3 o'clock at night with people who can put you in a bad situation," said Les McCook, executive director of the American Recovery Association, a trade group for repossession companies.

It was June 26 that the repo man came for Tanks' car in Halsell, a tiny, rural Choctaw County town near the Mississippi line. Tanks already had filed for bankruptcy and was behind on his payments, court documents show.

Tanks heard a noise and went outside with a gun, something anybody would do, said Choctaw County Sheriff James Lovette, who knew Tanks for years. Smith was indicted Tuesday, but no charges were filed against a man and his teenage son who accompanied Smith, said Lovette.

Smith's defense lawyer, Rusty Wright, said Tanks came out of the trailer and fired, and that Smith "just wanted to stop him."

"This is not the gunslinging cowboy that people think about with repo guys," Wright said. "(Smith) wasn't out to kill the guy."

The sheriff declined comment on whether Tanks shot at Smith.

Lovette said Smith worked out of Birmingham with Ascension Recovery, a subsidiary of the Chicago-based Renovo Services. The same recovery firm employed a repo man who was shot and killed on Jan. 8 in Birmingham, as well as a third worker who was wounded while towing a vehicle in the city on Feb. 10.

The CEO of Renovo Services, David Cowlbeck, didn't respond to questions sent by e-mail about the fatal shootings. He called the unsolved February wounding of 30-year-old Jason Williamson "a random act of violence."

"We trust that the perpetrators are quickly apprehended and charged accordingly," Cowlbeck said in a statement.

Lovette is asking the Alabama Sheriff's Association to push a bill limiting the hours when repossession companies can operate and requiring them to contact local law enforcement before working in an area.

"There's a time and place for everything, and 3 a.m. is not it," said Lovette.

The three states that actively license and monitor recovery agents — California, Florida and Louisiana — report less violence than other states, Taylor said. But most state legislatures aren't interested in repossession law until people start dying, he said.

"You don't find many state legislators who have had a car repossessed. They are just unfamiliar with that world," said Taylor.

Tanks was killed just two weeks after he married Georgia Tanks, who keeps a floral spray at the spot where he died beside the car, which is long gone. She wasn't at home the night he was killed because she was away teaching Vacation Bible School in nearby Meridian, Miss. She has filed a wrongful death suit in the slaying.

"It's senseless," she said, wiping away tears as she looked at their wedding photograph. "The legal stuff I don't know anything about. I just know God is going to let justice be done."

Smith, too, is haunted by what happened that night.

"I've played it through in my mind a million times to see if I could have done something different," he said. "I couldn't have."

This is by Eric Raymond ... It is more important than ever, today after a century of blood, that we retain the power both to protect ourselves and to discern the cause of such oppressions. That cause has never been in civilian arms borne by free people, but in their opposite and enemy — the organized and conscienceless brutality of cancerous states. ... It is time for each of us to rediscover the dignity of free men (and women) in the only way possible; by proving it in the crucible of daily decision, even on ultimate matters of life and death. It is time for us to embrace bearing arms again — as a gift and sacrament and affirmation to ourselves."

[Rajiv]

Re: Ethics from the Barrel of a Gun: What Bearing Weapons Teaches About the Good Life

This is how an arms race starts -- until everybody except the arms dealer is bankrupted!